Some Memories Are Best Forgotten
by Counterfeit God
Summary: .One Shot. Sephiroth believes Hojo is keeping something from him. He makes a trip to the desert to search a compound he recalls from his childhood. What he discovers is the last thing he expected...


Author's Note: This fic is a bit slow, but I wanted to try something a little different from my typical writing style. It doesn't really fit into the genres I like to write for, and it's not all that plot driven or eventful, it was just an idea I had. And I'm not all that confident in my ability to write Sephiroth well (don't know if I'll ever be...), but I decided this was something I couldn't pass up. So, basically, it is what it is: an experiment. By the way, this is probably even pre-Crisis Core, which probably makes it AU, but anyway...

Disclaimer: Again, I am only borrowing Sephiroth and everybody else... They're not really mine. I have made no claims that I might try to steal the replica of Sephiroth from the Square Enix place in Tokyo. I just think about it and drool. I'll keep my paws off...for now...

* * *

The heat was intense. Even with the strong wind that pummeled into him from the speed of the bike, it still felt overwhelmingly hot, the equivalent of driving across the inner surface of an oven.

All that could be seen for miles was light brown dirt, and the occasional hardy weed that somehow had managed to suck enough water out of the dry ground to grow. It was desert, wasteland even. Only the mountains broke up the scenery, though they were so far away that even with his more than perfect vision, they were somewhat blurred.

He could pick out the heat rising off the ground, distorting things in the distance. Sephiroth often thought of them as the 'waves of the desert', though he really had never seen an ocean to compare them to.

Behind him was a cloud of dust so thick that when he looked back the world was almost blocked from view. He should be getting nearer, he knew.

He was officially off duty, though truth be told he was always on call. Shinra seemed to call on him for even the smallest incidents, perhaps because he was one of the few who did not get so..._emotionally_ involved in bad situations. And with war, the situation was always bad.

But war and SOLDIER was not really what had brought him to the barrenness of the world outside of Midgar. He was hours from civilization, relying only on memory to get him to what he was searching for. He still couldn't fully explain what had coerced him to do something so rash. He was one to go by logic and planning, which was likely the reason he felt somewhat uncomfortable for the first time since his initiation into SOLDIER. This was not the way things should be done. A first class SOLDIER did not do things simply because he had a 'feeling'.

He turned the motorcycle particularly sharp, leaving behind a wall of dust, and made his way due west. It was close. He knew it was. If memory served him, when he was young and had been allowed to wander outside on one of the rare occasions, he had had a clear view of snow-capped peaks. There had even been the odd cactus, as the area was a place near where the desert transitioned into plain-like grasslands, and eventually dry, spindly forest.

It was late in the afternoon when he saw it, the distinct sheen of a window or maybe a sheet of metal reflecting in the hot desert sun. It was very far off, even though vision told him otherwise. He knew that he could not approach with the bike; it made too much noise with all of the intercoolers and fans running because of the stress of the heat. The desert was a quiet place, and even from miles away the sound of an engine would travel.

He stepped off the bike after silencing the engine, noticing how his black boots made their own little clouds of dust with each step. He would be leaving footprints, however, crosswinds were lashing relentlessly, so chances were the footprints wouldn't last long. And the bike...if it was found, whatever security was at the compound would be alerted and would have to be taken care of. That would most certainly ruin his chances of a clean and easy search. He didn't expect not to be caught, but it was not something he wanted to risk.

He started walking at a quick, even pace.

* * *

Sephiroth had rounded back a bit once he realized he was approaching the building from the front rather than the back. So far he had yet to detect a perimeter or any sign that the building was being heavily guarded, but he knew that looks could easily be deceiving. There was no telling what Hojo could have implemented to ensure that the building and undergound network was deemed secure.

He landed lightly on the roof, after realizing there were no guards at post. It was strange...the place felt...empty... He walked toward a maintenance hatch, and easily pried it open, lock and all, and dropped down into the darkness without thought.

He descended down a yellowed, peeling ladder, and ended up in a small backroom tiled with cheap linoleum and bright artificial lights. The brightness was harsh on his sensitive eyes. Again, he couldn't hear a sound. He sensed nothing, no presence. It was almost unsettling. Even with the lack of personnel, he focused on being even more aware.

Silence. A trap? No one knew he had left, or even had they, where he had gone. He had taken an unmarked bike rather than his own. He already had his suspicions about an implant in his own bike, some sort of tracking device. He had to be cautious.

He made his way down a narrow hall, then past an empty reception desk. He grabbed a few of the papers from the top of the stack, noting how nothing looked recently used. The computer screen was covered in a thick layer of dust. He looked down at the paper, searching for a date. He flipped through a few pages, finally finding one relating to fixing one of the security doors. The date was over a year old. He put the small stack back in its place, eyes assessing each hall critically. Still nothing.

Sephiroth had made it down to the bowels of the building, down into a boring looking basement that appeared completely ordinary. He walked over to a machine that looked to be for stacking equipment onto the high shelves. The key was in the ignition. On a whim, he turned it to 'on'.

A clatter of something falling toward his right. The engine had not turned on, but under a pile of fallen boxes he could see that a passage had been opened. It was the door that led to the stairwell he needed to get to.

He easily moved the boxes out of the way of the entrance, and walked through slowly, intent on hearing the smallest sound. Same as always, there was nothing.

There was a short path of stairs, then at the bottom a door. He remembered it. The door led to an elevator that permitted access to the underground section of the building, down to those labs...

There was something in the labs, there had to be. So why was this place unguarded and seemingly abandoned?

Hojo had been tense lately. Different. Sephirothhad spent years with the scientist, he knew his moods, his behaviors. He knew when to expect a particularly risky injection, or a new test by observing Hojo. It was that same sort of emotional reaction from Hojo lately that to anyone else wouldn't have seemed any different from his usual...strangeness. But Sephiroth knew better. There had been no extra tests done to him or any change in his dosages. Hojo had his mind on something else.

Sephiroth had found a folder marked 'Project R' only a few weeks afterward. Nothing had been in the folder besides a report that had given the location as 'isolation' and the status of the project, which read simply:

**Ready for testing.**

Hojo had been disappearing more and more often, though he was not aware that Sephiroth kept tabs on his movements after discovering the folder. SOLDIERs would never think to tell Hojo even if asked, that Sephiroth was having him watched. They were loyal to Sephiroth and Sephiroth alone. Many of them secretly loathed Hojo, which worked to Sephiroth's advantage.

There was a project in the desert, that was what the 'feeling' had told him. He had to know.

The elevator plummeted down, down, down. The glass did not give a view of anything but constant blackness, that had he been able to see, was going by at alarming speeds. They were about 1/8 of a mile below the surface, the labs. He remembered them from his very early childhood, the smells of chemicals, the cold white rooms and chrome experiment tables... The hum of monitors, the clicking of keyboards and mouses as scientists entered in newly-gathered information...

He closed his eyes momentarily to the onslaught, but opened them abruptly when the elevator stopped and he recalled where he was.

He stepped out into the stark, blinding white, his senses as keen as he could make them. He detected no movement, only the sound of hundreds of machines in the next few rooms.

Sephiroth went down the labyrinth of corridors, rooms, and chemical labs, finding no sign of human life. It was as though he was being pulled toward something...it was a feeling he was not familiar with, what others usually referred to as 'instinct'. Sephiroth's own senses were on the verge of precognition, and were never incorrect, whereas 'gut instincts' could prove to be nothing more than paranoia, precisely why he had been so slow in acting on the feeling. Nothing was certain, yet he _felt_ it was. Either way, Hojo was working on something, the file had proven that. It was not all left to chance.

He stared at the door he had been searching for, the black slits of his pupils darting over the surface, assessing, calculating. It required a passcode and fingerprint scan. There was the likelihood that breaking the lock could trigger an alarm, even if breaking the maintenance hatch on the roof had not. This was, after all, the labs, and the door was electronic rather than a typical door.

It was a chance he was willing to take. Why, he wasn't certain. He could see nothing inside the room itself, but only had that feeling that this was what he had come for.

He backed a few feet from the door, then deftly removed Masamune from its sheath on his back. In one swift slash, the steel of the sword effortlessly slid between the small crack between the door and the locking mechanism. There were sparks and a bit of smoke, but no lights flashed to give any warning of an alarm (though of course, there could still be one he wasn't aware of, he reflected).

He grabbed onto the slight edge of the door with both hands, then dragged it to the side just enough to allow him to pass.

The lights were dim, though his eyes penetrated the gloom easily, stopping to rest on the human body that was laid out upon one of the chrome tabletops covered in a white sheet. It was soaked in some spots with red. He did not sheathe Masamune, even though his senses told him the steady breathing of the body meant deep sleep, not wakefulness.

He walked closer, his footfalls sounding far too loud to his ears. A pale hand was draped over the edge of the shining table, the fingers thin and delicate. And something else...the nails, the shape and look of the fingers...

Nearby, a tank was bubbling and droning its mechanical sounds. A body was in the tank, though its face could not be picked out, as the upper half of the tank was covered in an ivory sheet.

Sephiroth focused his attention on the body on the table, standing within a foot of it and watching the sheet rise and fall with the breathing of the sleeper. Small specks of red blotted out some of the white, other parts were positively covered in crimson, testaments to the condition of the body under the sheet. Machines were beeping constantly, though not loudly, as they painstakingly monitored the body's activity second to second.

For some reason, Sephiroth had the impulsive desire to remove the sheet at least from the face, but he resisted. Greyish, fine silver hair was just visible from under the edge of the covering. His chest clenched slightly, unfamiliarly, at the sight, his body instantly becoming rigid and tense of its own accord. He hadn't realized he had stepped even closer, his own silver hair pooling on the table as he bent slightly to look closer.

Comprehension was already dawning, though Sephiroth still did not fully acknowledge his thoughts. It was like a fog had been cleared with a strong wind, though it had not driven the cloudiness away completely. There was still...doubt.

A gloved hand was placed gracefully onto the table, as Sephiroth squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, black lashes fluttering slightly. He opened them quickly again, not liking the feeling of being vulnerable. The feelings, the pain in his chest...he'd never felt anything like it. It was foreign, unnatural to his senses. It wasn't exactly pain...it was something else.

All along he had thought that coming to this place he would find something out about his past. Somewhere, part of him had thought that he would learn more of his biological mother, the one Hojo had called Jenova. Whatever was under the sheet wasn't Jenova, but it was something that was making him react in a way that would have been more familiar to Angeal or Genesis, not to him. There was something under that sheet...

He shook his head and stood up straight, ignoring the feelings and looking over to the tank for a moment and then to the backroom of the lab he was in. Hojo had not wanted him to find this place, or these...experiments.

His hand traveled to the edge of the sheet. He didn't even bother to brace himself or take a breath, he just pulled it back.

A young face, small nose, long black lashes, perfect light pink lips. Short silver hair. He must have been about fourteen, yet he still did not show any signs of masculinization. The first word that came to Sephiroth's mind was 'androgynous'.

He inadvertently drew back from the table like he'd been slapped, as eyes flickered open. Green, hazy eyes with cat-like slits for pupils. Sephiroth's breath came out in a hiss.

"What are you?" he murmured, clutching Masamune reflexively in his left hand, deep lines of confusion for once showing on his own face.

The boy rasped out something, it was so low that only Sephiroth's mako-enhanced hearing made it audible. It sounded like, "Brother..."

The monitor's beeping quickened considerably with the boy's exertion, but Sephiroth was battling with his own thoughts, too preoccupied to notice.

Sephiroth clutched his head, dropping Masamune and backing away even more as he tore his eyes away from the small frail little body that must be covered in slashes under the white sheet.

He knew it would be, not just because of the blood, but because he had been in the same position before, lab rat on the table, not human to the scientists, but experiment. A flood of memories was nearly crippling him, but his iron will slashed through it all, as a warning went off in his head. Footsteps, voices...

There was more than just one person coming his direction.

He struggled to control himself, and immediately reached for the fallen Masamune. As he went toward it, his chest hammered painfully and his knees buckled. He was on the ground before he could even realize it. His hand still snaked out anyway, but he was not within reach of the sword.

Everything was alight. It was as though there was fire in his veins pumping straight into his heart, the place it hurt the most. Something was very wrong. His hands which had been pliable and articulate only a moment before, stiffened. His legs locked in the positions they had landed when he had fallen.

His right hand, however... He used what little motion he had left to reach even more desperately for Masamune. His gloved fingers knocked against the edge of the blade for a moment before he was able to latch onto the metal and bring it to him. His right shoulder was stiffening now, becoming paralyzed like the left had already, but he was able to flip Masamune around so the he could grip it. Even if he was not quite as skilled with the sword with his right hand, he was still armed. It was his body he needed to worry about. He willed his legs to move, but they barely responded, if at all.

The footsteps were at the door now.

He forced out a breath that came out sounding like a growl, as the scientist Hojo pressed himself in through the door, an evil smile on his face.

The low light reflected off of Hojo's oversized glasses, obscuring his eyes, but not hiding that triumphant smile. Several more scientists had walked in the door, all of them making themselves scarce as they saw the figure of Sephiroth armed with Masamune, lying on the linoleum.

One had hurried over toward the table where the boy had nearly managed to climb down.

"Well, well, well," Hojo said in his sing-song voice.

Unfortunately Hojo was not within the dangerous reach of Masamune, or otherwise, Sephiroth might have attempted to maim him even in his sluggish state.

"Came to investigate, did you? Find anything interesting?" Hojo laughed again, that tittering irritant of a laugh that somehow projected his madness into a single sound. He had looked over to the table when he said it, then back down at Sephiroth.

"What did you do to me?" Sephiroth snarled, his right hand tightening ever-so-slightly on Masamune.

"Oh, just a little test." With that Hojo motioned one of the scientists, who looked to be carrying a hypodermic syringe. "Can't move, can you?"

"No," Sephiroth said hatefully, realizing this entire trip had been some sort of game. It wasn't exactly surprising coming from Hojo. His mind was muddled, becoming less his own, just like his body. It was becoming difficult to think, to stay conscious. He couldn't hold onto the strands of thought that had only just started to begin to make sense of things...

The scientist with the needle neared, and immediately Sephiroth implemented what little muscle control he had, swinging Masamune directly into the path of the scientist. With a spray of blood, the arm carrying the syringe was severed completely, causing an animalistic wail of pain. Several of the scientists fled to the farthest corners of the room, scared for their lives, as Hojo observed it all with a smile, not even stepping back at the sight of a furious Sephiroth or a man who just lost his arm, and was meanwhile dying from blood loss on the floor.

Hojo had been close enough that a spray of blood had splattered his lab jacket and dotted his glasses. If it was possible, his smile had broadened even more. "It won't be long before everything shuts down." He paused for a moment so that the screaming of the scientist wouldn't interrupt his little speech, then continued, "It was supposed to be much more quick-acting than this, but of course the drug is experimental..."

Sephiroth only managed a grimace, as his body became almost entirely paralyzed. All he could do was blink and hold his head above the floor out of sheer will and stubbornness.

"It activated in your bloodstream the minute you walked through the perimeter."

So there had been a perimeter, Sephiroth thought to himself, though the drug wiped the thought away as quickly as it had come.

"Ideally you should have been rendered immobile within a minute. There was enough to paralyze even the largest fiends...adequately. Given the result, this test was quite necessary, as I told President ShinRa. Damage control, you see."

Hojo removed his glasses and began to clean them with the tail of his lab coat. "Just in case you should ever...stray...we have a means of recovering you. You are a very valuable asset, after all."

Sephiroth was barely able to hold his eyes open. He could faintly hear Hojo muttering on as he always did:

"And I thought letting you see the result of 'Project R' would be an interesting experiment in and of itself. It also guaranteed that you would be far away from the prying eyes of your loving SOLDIERs. We couldn't risk the experiment going wrong, or someone accidentally seeing you after we activated the drug."

Sephiroth's head finally rested on the linoleum, his thick silver hair laid around him like a halo. His eyes were only open enough for a slice of green to be seen, and his breathing had slowed down considerably.

The Remnant Kadaj, was being held down by several scientists as he yelled out "Brother!" and lashed out violently at any who were stupid enough to come close enough.

In the tank in the corner, Loz stirred in his medical-induced coma. In the back room Yazoo's eyes moved rapidly under their lids. Both sensed the intense emotion of Kadaj, but were powerless to help him.

"Don't worry," Hojo said to Sephiroth's barely conscious form.

Kadaj continued to scream and kick as the scientists finally managed to hold his battered body onto the chrome table to inject him with a sedative. He still bucked even after he had been injected, managing hit one of the scientists hard enough that he careened into a lab table. Kadaj slowed down considerably as the drug started to take complete effect, his green cat eyes focusing on the form of his beloved Sephiroth who was laying motionless on the floor.

"You won't remember a thing."

* * *

Author's Note: In case anyone was confused, all those "feelings" Sephiroth thought he was having as he was staring down at Kadaj were actually the result of Hojo's experimental drug. No, Sephiroth wasn't having a "moment". Haha. You wish. And I didn't explain it in the fic, but Hojo had put something in Sephiroth during a previous visit to the lab (Sephiroth was probably put under and all of that). Then, like Hojo said, it activated when Sephiroth came within a certain distance of the compound.


End file.
